


Shadows of you

by a_fantasia (AyuT)



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-12-12
Packaged: 2018-01-02 07:36:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AyuT/pseuds/a_fantasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After losing part of his memories in an accident, Sho must decide whether to move on with his new life or to try and follow some threads leading to his forgotten years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [This way ;)](http://a-fantasia.livejournal.com/36405.html)

Sakurai Sho was determined not to look back, or even try to, anymore.

  
It was almost a year after his accident, the one which swept part of his past to a sea of darkness, where it had almost completely vanished. He had mainly forgotten his last years at college and everything that followed until he woke up a grey November morning at the hospital being a 29-year-old man. Although the doctors were quite positive when they said he might still recover his memories, he had made no significant progress in all that time.  
  
At first, he had been deeply frustrated. Nothing, not even the most essential things for him in his previous life, managed to bring the slightest spark of a memory to his blank mind. It had been so weird feeling that empty, as if he had spent a million years hibernating and things had changed so much he didn’t recognize them anymore, and those he recognized were far in the past.  
  
However, step by step, he had come to terms with it. He didn’t know what was missing, but knew what wasn’t. He had his job at a publishing house in Tokyo, where he lived in a spacious, bright apartment with his boyfriend, Jun, who always put Sho before himself. He focused only on these things that were sure, known to him, true, and the anxiety slowly disappeared.  
  
So he was fine, perhaps even _happy_ , and things were okay.  
  
That is, before the day his past appeared right in front of his eyes.  
  
It was September, and they were at the airport. To celebrate Jun’s birthday and his own new resolutions, Sho had organized a trip to Hawaii for both. While they were waiting for their baggage to come out, he left on his own to get some coffee and breakfast.  
  
Things wouldn’t have changed if, on his way back, he hadn’t seen something he wouldn’t be able to forget in the following months.  
  
It was a glimpse of a stranger's face; a face with features which were immediately etched on his mind, as clear as a photograph. Sho found himself standing among the crowd, two paper cups and a plastic bag in his hands, still as a statue, mesmerized by that vision.  
  
The flow of time suddenly seemed to freeze, and all he could see was that person looking at him; not wanting to, but still looking. His expression was a mixture between happiness and sadness. For a moment, Sho also felt those emotions reaching him and revolving inside his body, like a wild gush of warm wind running through him. The connection he felt was so sudden, yet so strong, his head was reeling, and soon his eyes were welling up.  
  
However, before any thought came to his mind, the man had disappeared.  
  
It was then when Sho’s fragile stability threatened to break apart —the moment he turned around and looked for him once again.  


***

  
Months passed, and the year was coming to an end. He never told Jun about that encounter, not even when he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it during the following autumn. Sometimes it just happened —he saw someone in a picture, or in the street, thought he used to know them, but then he was never able to tell who they were and gave up after some time.  
  
However, this time something was different.  
  
How could he explain the numb feelings, the slight uneasiness and the nostalgia whenever he pictured that face in his mind? Why was that image always as clear as the first time, if not clearer every time? Why was the connection he felt so strong?  
  
He hated it. He hated the idea of breaking the promise he had made to himself and to Jun, of being carried away by a stranger who had shed some light over those dark waters he didn't want to go into, drawing his attention to them.  
  
He had already gone through a lot in his first months of recovery. In a span of half a year, he had to learn how to live all over again. He had to learn who he was, what he did, what he liked, what he didn’t... and also who he knew, who he could trust, and who he loved.  
  
Jun definitely fell into those three categories at the same time. He was the only one. If it wasn’t for him, Sho would have been even more lost.  
  
His worried face was the first thing he saw and remembered after waking up at the hospital. Jun had stayed next to his bed, only leaving the room when he was forced to go for food, during the three nights it took Sho to regain consciousness, after a severe concussion that almost made him go into a coma.  
  
When he opened his eyes, Jun was sitting next to him, observing him tenderly. His outside appearance was as perfect as ever, but looking deep into his eyes Sho could tell he was anxious and exhausted, perhaps about to collapse. He didn't even recall who he was or what his name was at that moment; yet he knew, right away, before he knew anything else, that he loved that person who was holding his hand.  
  
“Sho, thank goodness...” Jun’s voice trembled with emotion, as he pressed the button to call the doctors.  
  
Sho smiled a bit, just before Jun leaned over the mattress and kissed him on the lips. Then he held him in a tight embrace and rested his head on his chest. Sho lifted his hand and gently caressed his nape with his fingertips. It felt good, safe and warm.  
  
As soon as he was discharged, Sho went to live at Jun's apartment. He was only planning to stay for a couple of months, but he ended up moving in. There was no other place he felt comfortable at. It had become home. And Jun, his new family.  
  
On Christmas night, they had dinner at home, just the two of them. It was the second time, at least in Sho’s memories. They were relaxing on the sofa and drinking wine while admiring the big tree they had bought the previous week. After some minutes of silence, Sho got up, left his empty glass on the table and walked towards the piano Jun had bought him when he moved in. He spent hours playing it whenever he had a day off, and he was perfectly aware that Jun liked to spy on him then.  
  
“What about a private Christmas concert?” he asked with a playful voice, softly brushing his fingers through the keys.  
  
Jun straightened on his seat and smiled at him. “You know I’d love that.”  
  
Sho sat down in front of the instrument and started playing one of his favorite pieces, a song he still remembered even though he had forgotten how and when he learned it. Jun leaned his head on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Sho did the same, throwing his head back to let the music flow out from his heart through his fingers, and then coming back inside him through his ears.  
  
“Fantastic,” Jun’s praised him after he was finished. “You’ve gotten amazingly better since the first time you played this for the four of us—” he suddenly stopped.  
  
No matter how many times Sho told him it was fine, Jun was always very careful with mentioning things from the past. He said he didn’t want to force him in any way; if Sho’s memories ever came back, it should be on their own. Filling his head with outside facts and descriptions of things he was supposed to have lived by himself would be completely useless.  
  
“Don’t worry, just tell me,” Sho said, sitting back on the sofa next to him. “I’d like to hear about that.”  
  
Jun looked a bit serious before talking again. “No, it’s just that. You played this for the three of us some years ago. It was really touching.”  
  
“Really? Did you cry?” Sho asked him, amused. “Well, of course you wouldn’t if Ohno and Aiba were around.”  
  
Apart from Jun, Sho had two more close friends. He had been hanging out with them as a group for some time, but not long enough for Sho to remember them right away. The first one, Ohno Satoshi, was an office clerk, not the talkative type, rather mysterious, but extremely efficient in his own way and someone you could count on. The other one, Aiba Masaki, was a zoo keeper, too naive and innocent sometimes, but highly reliable and nice to have a chat with.  
  
“Yes, you guessed right,” Jun answered with a little smile. “But I almost did.”  
  
“Oh, I should be proud then,” Sho smiled, throwing an arm around Jun’s shoulders.  
  
He was weirdly tense. But there was a very effective way to get rid of that. Slowly, Sho moved his free hand and started tickling Jun’s sides, until he burst out laughing and pushed him away. Sho stared fondly at him as he tried to regain his composure.  
  
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m fine.”  
  
“I can’t help it,” was Jun’s response, as usual.  
  
Sho leaned in and kissed him tenderly.  
  
“I know,” he answered, tilting his head to place a soft kiss on Jun’s neck. “But you need to trust me.”  
  
It would take a little more time for things to definitely settle down, but they would make it through. They _had_ to, no matter what. That’s all Sho thought while he grabbed Jun’s hand and silently led him to their bedroom.

***

  
It wasn’t until later that something clicked inside him and broke his determination once again.  
  
It was sudden, like a flash of lightning. Sudden, clear and strong.  
  
He was playing that piece again, though this time his fingers didn’t move so smoothly. He lifted his eyes from the keys and looked around the room, smiling at his friends. There was Ohno, about to fall asleep on a chair, and Aiba, standing next to him and happily humming along with the music.  
  
At the other side of the room, there was an armchair. Sho went back to the sheets before looking at Jun, who had to be the one sitting there. However, what he found after turning his head was the stranger he had seen at the airport. He stood up, walked towards Sho and, when he was finished playing, he lifted a glass of champagne and invited him to drink a toast.  
  
“ _Merry Christmas, Sho-chan._ ”  
  
Everything faded to black. Sho’s whole body shook. That made him realize he was in a horizontal position, lying on his bed. He grasped at the sheets in an attempt to make his head stop turning, but he was still confused and disoriented. Jun woke up, alarmed, and touched him to find he was shivering.  
  
“Are you cold?” he asked him, reaching to pull a blanket over him.  
  
“Jun,” Sho said in a husky voice, feeling his boyfriend’s hand in the dark. “We were five.”  
  
“What are you saying?” Jun answered, lying back next to him.  
  
“You said it before,” Sho added, as things fell into their place in his mind. A car passed by at the street and its lights reflected in the ceiling, illuminating the shapes of the objects in the room for a second. “You said I played for the _four_ of you.”  
  
“That was a mistake,” Jun said, in a barely audible voice, muffled against the pillow.  
  
“I think I remember that person. I think I _saw_ him,” Sho went on, unable to suppress the words coming out of his mouth.  
  
“It must have been a dream,” Jun briefly sentenced before rolling over.  
  
“It wasn’t. I wasn’t sleeping yet,” Sho insisted, searching deeper and trying hard to retain those images. “It was a memory.”  
  
A memory with the stranger. The stranger, with those sharp eyes and that haunting smile, had been with him and his friends. He had listened to his piano. He had celebrated Christmas with him. He had developed enough intimacy with him to call him Sho-chan.  
  
“Who was he?”  
  
In and out of his mind, instead of a response, all he found was silence.

***

  
Exactly a month after that, Sho celebrated his 31st birthday. Although January was a busy time for all of them (proof of it was that they couldn’t even meet on New Years as they used to), his friends somehow managed to get together and throw him a surprise party.  
  
Right when he was finished with work, he received an unexpected call from Ohno, who asked him for a favor. He urgently needed something he had left at his apartment and wanted Sho to get it and bring it to his office. Considering Ohno tended to forget things more often than not, it could have been perfectly true. But that didn’t mean he didn’t have his suspicions beforehand.  
  
Obviously, Jun was behind it all. He hadn’t been especially talkative the previous week, and Sho imagined that it had to be something else apart from the pending conversation they had. Sho would have liked to talk about his memory in the days that followed that night, but Jun was kind of distant and elusive. And even when he suddenly went back to his usual attentive, sometimes overprotective self, Sho felt he couldn’t just start talking about it abruptly. Jun was not easy to approach when he put up that wall around himself, and Sho was always careful with him. Since he was such a hard person to know right away, ever since the accident, Sho had learnt to read his emotions through his actions rather than through his words, and he just knew it wasn’t the right time yet.  
  
The problem was that, for him, it _was_ time.  
  
It’s not like he broke his own promise. He had done nothing. Everything, the stranger and the memory, had come on its own. He hadn’t searched for anything, and he wouldn’t like to know if he hadn’t already seen the tip of the iceberg. But one of his great virtues —or perhaps it was one of his flaws— was his big curiosity. And, by the time of his birthday party, his desire to pull out the string and see what was at the other side had become a monster that would eat him up if he didn’t face it.  
  
Yes, that was it. He had a plan. He would simply hear the story, and that was it. If it brought happy memories, he would be fine. If not, he would throw it back into the dark waters and let it sink forever.  
  
He couldn’t talk to Jun, but Ohno and Aiba were there as well, so he took the opportunity to ask them when he wasn’t around. He told them about the circumstances Jun mentioned and the image that came later into his mind. They both listened in silence, and neither said anything when Sho was finished.  
  
“Do you guys know who he is?” he asked, becoming impatient. “Was he usually with us?”  
  
Ohno just looked blank, but Aiba’s face was strangely serious. That was the first sign that they were hiding something from him. And judging by the latter’s constant blinking, which was something he always did when he was indeed lying or hiding something, it was a huge thing. What was it that they couldn’t trust him to know?  
  
First, Jun was upset, and now Ohno and Aiba looked sad and uncomfortable. Did that mean that, whoever that person was, he had hurt them? Had he hurt Sho too? Were they afraid that he would hurt him again, so they were protecting him?  
  
Whichever was the case, he felt he had the right to choose whether he wanted to hear about it. If it was something from the past, it shouldn’t affect him, or any of them, anymore. He wanted to know, more than ever. He didn’t like being left out like that. He didn’t like it at all.  
  
“Seriously, is it that hard to just talk?” he broke the silence.  
  
Obtaining no reply just made his anger build up. What were they waiting for?  
  
“I have lost my memories, not my head!” he exclaimed, raising his voice more than he intended to.  
  
It looked like Aiba was going to say something before Sho heard Jun’s voice next to him.  
  
“Nino” he said in a soft voice, and that name was instantly matched to the man’s face in Sho’s brain, “just tagged along sometimes.” He made a short pause in which Ohno and Aiba nodded. “We didn’t know him very well. He was…”  
  
“A colleague of mine,” Ohno added, exchanging a brief look with Jun before turning to Sho. “A former colleague. He moved to another country.”  
  
“Yes, that’s it,” Aiba smiled. “Ohno said he was cool, so we invited him to some of our gatherings.”  
  
“What we want to say,” Jun talked again, “is that he wasn’t anyone special. You don’t need to worry.”  
  
Sho took a deep breath and went to sit at the table.  
  
“Thank you,” he said before motioning them to do the same.  
  
Jun gave him a concerned look, and only sat down when Sho started to eat.  
  
Nobody brought up the topic again that night. They just talked about the usual stuff, gave Sho his presents and got a little drunk. At around 2 am, Jun and Sho decided to go home, leaving a quite sleepy but still incredibly noisy Aiba lying on Ohno’s couch.  
  
On their way back, since Sho drank a bit more than usual, it was Jun’s turn to drive. None of them started talking. After some minutes, Jun turned on the radio, the volume low enough to keep himself awake without filling the silence that could still turn into a conversation.  
  
Despite getting the hint, Sho turned his head and looked at the night lights out the window. He pressed the button to roll it down a bit, just to let in a subtle but cold breeze that helped him clear his mind. Once he thought he was ready, he analyzed the information he was given earlier.  
  
The stranger’s name was Nino. He wasn’t a part of the group, only someone from Ohno’s company he introduced to them. Nothing else.  
  
Somehow, he was disappointed.  
  
There was something off, something missing about that story. Those facts could be perfectly true, and he had no option but to believe them. But there were some details left. Yes, that was it, some more details were necessary. Details could be important, especially to explain what he was feeling; how Jun, Ohno and Aiba seemed to feel about it as well. Where did all that sadness and discomfort come from? What about the closeness they had in his memory?  
  
He thought he would be able to make a decision that night, but he found out he couldn’t. Not yet. Observing Jun’s serious expression, hands firmly gripping the wheel as he carefully looked at the road, Sho wondered if he would agree to tell him more about Nino. He didn’t know about Ohno or Aiba, but he had the feeling that, in any case, he wasn’t Jun’s favorite person. But then, it was also him who gave him the answer he wanted first.  
  
It was supposed to have ended that night, but it just kept growing.


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re still wondering about Nino?” Jun asked, the day Sho finally talked to him about it in the kitchen. It was already March.  
  
Sho nodded. He wanted to say that he didn’t do it on purpose, that this time he really tried not to care about it anymore but couldn’t help it —he needed to see Nino again personally and judge the situation for himself. Instead, he just gulped his words and watched Jun’s reaction.  
  
“I see,” he replied, turning the stove off and stirring the soup. “Well, now that you’ve heard about him you should be fine.”  
  
Sho was more surprised than relieved when he first heard that. He had even prepared arguments to convince his boyfriend in case he would completely oppose it. But, actually, Jun was very understanding. He even encouraged him to meet Nino.  
  
“I think Ohno is still in touch with him…” he said, motioning Sho to take out some plates and get the table ready for both. “We can go to his place tomorrow night and ask if he knows anything.”  
  
According to Ohno, Nino was working in New York. He did come back to Japan occasionally, but never for too long, usually a day or two at most. They sometimes phoned each other. Sho felt relieved to know that at least those two were on good terms.  
  
After listening to Sho, he took out his phone and a small card from his wallet. He dialed a long string of numbers and handed it over to Sho. On the screen he could read Nino’s full name: Ninomiya Kazunari. Once again, it perfectly matched with the face in his limited memories, if Sho wasn’t only used to make that association.  
  
“It's around breakfast time there, so I suppose he'll get it,” Ohno told him.  
  
There was a pause in which Sho noticed his hands were slightly shaking. He couldn’t explain exactly why, because there was nothing to get nervous about. He simply hoped Jun wouldn’t notice and insist on him giving up. Luckily, Ohno stood up in the right moment.  
  
“Let’s leave him alone,” he asked Jun.  
  
Jun didn't listen to him right away. He only got up after Sho gave him the best reassuring look he had. Before following Ohno, he placed his hand on his boyfriend’s shoulder and squeezed it softly, brushing his cheek lightly as he lifted it. Sho smiled at him.  
  
Once on his own, Sho took a deep breath and moved his finger to press the call button.  
  
The tones he could hear after some seconds were the only thing that separated him from Ninomiya Kazunari, months ago a mere shadow, a drop in the black pool of his missing memories, and later the reason for him to be, deep down, distrusting his friends and even his boyfriend’s words.  
  
What would he say to Sho’s proposition? Would he want to see him? Would he even listen to him in the first place? If he di—  
  
Someone picked up. Sho heard noise at some crowded street. Cars and people.  
  
“Nino,” he called him, realizing at that same moment he had actually, not only mentally, pronounced that name uncountable times.  
  
He waited.  
  
No answer. Breathing.  
  
“Who's this?” a very familiar voice, yet oddly unheard for him, asked. “You’re not Ohno-san.”  
  
Sho’s words came out all at once.  
  
“I’m sorry. My name is Sakurai Sho,” he introduced himself, feeling completely stupid the following second. “Well, I guess you’d remember me better than I remember you,” he laughed uncomfortably. “The thing is I’ve forgotten about a lot of things that happened in the last seven or eight years… But last summer I saw you at the airport, and, um, well, I didn’t know who you were until Jun, Matsumoto Jun, told me—“  
  
“Did you... Do you remember _everything_?”  
  
From his choice of words, he had known about his condition before Sho told him. He probably learned about it through his conversations with Ohno, so it didn’t really come as unexpected. What did, though, was the anxiousness in his voice; Nino suddenly seemed very concerned about the issue, perhaps even too much.  
  
“No. Only a few memories. In fact, just one,” Sho answered with the truth. “And the general information they told me. About how you were a friend who worked with Ohno and would hang out with us occasionally,” he spoke quickly and gulped before going on. “But… I feel there’s something missing. So I thought I’d ask you directly.”  
  
A sigh. The sound of people and cars again. Sho waited.  
  
Nino’s sentence was genuinely cryptic.  
  
“Well, let’s say I wasn’t quite a friend.”  
  
A thousand questions popped into Sho’s mind, but that wasn’t either the right moment or the right means to ask further. So he pushed them away and went straight to the point.  
  
“When are you coming to Japan?”  
  
“Most probably next week,” Nino replied after some seconds.  
  
Sho cleared his throat. “Could we meet then? I really need to talk to you.”  
  
“Alright,” Nino agreed right away, without even checking any schedule. “Listen, I’ve got to hang up. I'll call you when I'm there. You've kept the same number, right?”  
  
Sho made an affirmative sound.  
  
“Goodbye.”  
  
Nino's voice and the sounds of New York turned into empty tones again. With each one of them, his mysterious words lingered in the air.

 

***

  
  
  
They talked again the following Tuesday, three days later. Sho didn't usually answer calls from private numbers, but that time he made an exception just in case.  
  
“Hello.”  
  
It was incredible how easily he could tell it was Nino, given it was only the second time for him.  
  
“Hello. How are—“  
  
“Is tomorrow at 4 pm fine?”  
  
Sho frowned. Nino’s voice was different; compared to the last time it was cold, almost mechanical. It made him feel slightly uncomfortable.  
  
“Um... yes. Yes, that's okay,” Sho said, mentally placing their appointment in the gap he had between leaving work and getting home. “Where?”  
  
“I'll be waiting for you at the usual place. I have something to do half an hour after that, so please don't be late.”  
  
Actually, that was the time Sho had as well. If their meeting lasted any longer than that, he would have to wait fifteen extra minutes for the next train. He wondered if Nino knew about his habits or it was a mere coincidence.  
  
“Okay, don't worry. I'll be there on time.”  
  
Just as in the previous call, Nino hanged up first after saying “goodbye”. Sho felt as though it was something he wasn’t used to. But why should he be used to anything related to someone who had been “not quite a friend”, anyway? He didn’t even know about that usual place he mentioned, to begin with.  
  
“Is there any place where Nino and I would always meet, like a usual spot or something?” he asked Jun while they were having dinner.  
  
“It must be the park next to the station,” Jun replied after giving it some thought. “Why? Are you meeting there?”  
  
“Yes, tomorrow.”  
  
Jun made a pause and looked at him across the table. However, nothing changed in his expression; there was no tension like weeks ago. There was just silence and a light nod, as in a confirmation.  
  
“Okay. Will you be home for dinner?”  
  
Sho decided it was a good sign. Whatever happened that afternoon, whether Nino was nice or not, or good or bad memories were unveiled in that encounter, wouldn’t really matter afterwards. Things would be exactly the same. In the end, he was only peeking at the creatures living in the dark waters, not trying to catch them or to jump into the bottom. Once he’d seen through the waves, he’d go back to the shore.  
  
“Yeah, sure.”

 

***

  
  
  
He was twenty minutes early, but Nino was already waiting for him at the park. It felt strangely natural to walk towards him like that, easily finding him among the crowd and heading straight to where he was standing, as if Sho and he were opposite poles attracted by magnetism. Although, in his daily life, déjà vu was a constant sensation, this time it was alarmingly stronger than usual.  
  
Images came to his mind, soft and vague, like a distant mist. He could see Nino wearing different clothes, the scenery changing with the season; a crooked smile was always on his face as his eyes searched in his direction. He yelled at him, “you're late!”, and Sho heard himself complaining that he wasn’t. He just _knew_ he never was. Or almost never.  
  
He stopped before crossing the road and shook his head lightly, enough to push those images away. He forced his mind back to the present. Nino wasn’t his friend anymore, just someone he used to know. Sho focused on that and looked across the street at him. He was staring at his cell phone in a light grey suit that looked weird on him in a way Sho couldn’t explain.  
  
Nino only lifted his head when he was in front of him.  
  
“Don’t think you know me,” he stated without a previous greeting. “Because you don’t.”  
  
Sho blinked, taken aback by his frankness and, at the same time, the inscrutable expression on his face.  
  
There was something heavy in the air. Even though it had been sunny all day, the sky suddenly looked as if it was going to rain. He frowned at the dark clouds coming, unable to understand how Nino went so directly to the point without him saying a word.  
  
“You’re right,” Sho said with a faint smile. “I don’t anymore. But I wonder if I once did.”  
  
“Why do you want to know?”  
  
This time too, Sho was intrigued by his use of words. It was like going through a labyrinth and having to choose a path. He could either bump against a wall, or move to the next intersection.  
  
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “Curiosity, perhaps…” He stopped. “In any case, I plan things to stay the way they are, so don’t worry.”  
  
Nino’s lips broke into a smile.  
  
“Well, I’m afraid I can’t give you any useful information,” he sighed. “You know everything already. We just happened to have friends in common, and I sometimes came by. We had fun. That’s it. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”  
  
There it was, the wall, already.  
  
“There must be something,” he insisted, feeling that the man in front of him was keeping something to himself. “Please. You called me ‘Sho-chan’, right?”  
  
For the first time, Nino looked right into his eyes. Sho stared back at him, hoping to read something more than tiredness and indifference in those features he had remembered so faithfully.  
  
There was thunder in the distance.  
  
“Could be,” he muttered, taking out a cigarette from his pocket. “But it’s nothing worth remembering.”  
  
Again, someone was taking the decision for him. Sho gulped, ready to insist some more; however, something else distracted him. Nino brought the cigarette to his mouth and lighted it up, the flame coloring his face yellowish for an instant and making his eyelashes darker with their shadow. Sho stared at his lips as he puffed on it. Smoke came out between his teeth and rose into the air between them, disappearing right away.  
  
The moment he thought that smoke had been in Nino’s lungs, Sho felt thoroughly disgusted. Even though he hadn’t consciously meant to do it, his hand moved automatically and hit Nino’s, making the cigarette fall to the ground before he could bring it back to his mouth.  
  
“Sorry…” he apologized, observing his hand as if it weren’t a part of his body.  
  
“You’re the same as usual,” Nino said, putting out the cigarette.  
  
“When I quit smoking, I made you stop as well,” Sho came to realization as he pronounced those words.  
  
“And I never stopped, so what?” Nino said, giving him a wary look.  
  
It was Sho’s opportunity to talk to him and finally clear all his doubts, but, rather than curiosity, what lead him to what he did in that moment was a mere instinct. The instinct to take that man’s thin, small body somewhere and take care of it —the instinct to protect Nino from anything that might be harmful to him.  
  
It was almost like a reflex, the same pattern as when he moved his hand before; he touched Nino’s shoulder and pressed it softly as he leaned forward, his head tilting a bit to the side. Just like his voice when he heard it over the phone, it felt incredibly familiar. Even though his mind couldn’t recall having kissed him before, his body did remember.  
  
That scared him; he immediately moved away from Nino, realizing what he had just done.  
  
“I’ve told you,” Nino whispered. “You’re better off without knowing. Please don’t do this.”  
  
Sho covered his mouth with his hand, incapable of hiding his shock.  
  
Rain started to fall practically at the same time Ninomiya Kazunari, the man whose lips tasted like cigarettes and yesterday and perhaps _love_ , walked away, leaving a completely lost Sakurai Sho behind.


	3. Chapter 3

One Sunday morning, months later, Sho remembered something else.  
  
June was the less busy month at the office, so his boss let some of his employees take a week off. That included Sho. He still had to work on some reports from home, but he would be free most of the time.  
  
The first thing he decided to do was to sleep as much as he could, as a compensation for the deprivation he had accumulated in the first half of the year. He had gone to bed early the previous night, and wasn’t sure of the time it was when he woke up and found Jun lying next to him. He was profoundly asleep. Sho’s lips curved into a smile and he rolled over to gaze at him. It was such an unusual sight, since Jun always managed to be up first.  
  
After a while, without even noticing, he fell half asleep and his mind slowly drifted away.  
  
He was looking out a window, in a building that looked like a college faculty. There was another building right in front of it, with a structure so similar it was like looking through a mirror. Behind it, the sun was setting. A gentle breeze, blowing across the yard that separated the buildings, ruffled his hair.  
  
He just stood there, contemplating something in the distance, until a sound at the end of the corridor broke his concentration. He turned his head and saw a guy in his first or second year kneeling among a pile of books he had just dropped.  
  
Sho walked towards him with the intention of helping him, but he had already picked up everything when he arrived. He looked anxiously at his watch.  
  
“Shit, I’m late…” he muttered under his breath. Then he looked at Sho, and stared at him with his big, curious eyes for a couple of seconds before reacting. “Excuse me… do you happen to know where class 2-11 is?"  
  
Sho checked the number on the nearest door and answered promptly, “that’s right upstairs.”  
  
“Thank you,” the boy smiled.  
  
“What a nice smile,” Sho thought, and stopped him before he went up the stairs. "Hey, um, sorry... what was your name?"  
  
“Matsumoto Jun,” was his answer.  
  
Sho opened his eyes and found that same smile right in front of him, a hand softly running through his hair.  
  
“Jun,” he whispered, lifting his hand to touch his boyfriend’s face and trace the shape of his lips with his thumb, “you’re still here.”  
  
“You were talking in your sleep," he pointed out, “though I didn't get what you were saying."  
  
“It was you,” Sho replied. Jun made a questioning sound. “At university, when we met. Class 2-11.”  
  
“Oh, didn’t you remember?” Jun asked in a disappointed tone. “I’m so sad you forgot about that too.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Sho apologized, “I wish I hadn’t."  
  
Jun leaned forward and kissed Sho.  
  
“It’s fine now.”  
  
With memories like this one, it was.  
  
However, it was already too late to turn his back to the rest. Without even looking, he knew the black sea was rough, and the tide was getting high.

 

***

  
  
_Nino_.  
  
Those four letters were written using a thick, black marker on the CD Sho was holding in his hands. The surface was all white, with no marks except for that name. He found it inside a plastic case while searching for an album in Jun’s collection. From the moment he saw it, he knew it didn’t belong to his boyfriend, though. He just felt that wasn’t the place where it was supposed to be.  
  
If Jun had been around, he would probably have put it back in its place, hidden in the space between the shelf and the wall. Then, he would have tried hard to forget about its existence, just as he had done with what happened that rainy afternoon. And, as time went by, maybe, he would have succeeded —at both things.  
  
But Jun was away at work. He wasn’t coming back until that evening, which meant Sho would be all day on his own. His initial plan, apart from taking care of a report he was asked to prepare, was to stay home and start thinking about Jun’s birthday present.  
  
It was still over two months ahead, but this was the perfect moment to do something. After pondering for a while, he came up with the idea of making a remix using some of his favorite songs. That’s why he went to look at his CDs. And, also, how he ended up with that one in his hands.  
  
He left it on the desk in front of him and turned the chair around.  
  
“It would be as simple as throwing it away,” he thought. “Jun wouldn’t mind, I’m sure. And I will never know what it is. That’s all. Easy.”  
  
He buried his face in his hands and sighed.  
  
“ _You’re better off without knowing. Please don’t do this._ ”  
  
Those words had never left him even since he heard them. Something inside of him was willing to follow that advice, to do what everybody seemed to want him to do. It would be the best choice. Jun’s change of mood when his first memory came, Aiba’s and Ohno’s troubled expressions, and Nino’s tired words... all of them would be relieved if he gave up.  
  
Even so, there was another thing that pushed him to know more. It was an impulse from his heart, rather than a rational idea, a feeling that was born after his brief meeting with Nino. There was something bigger in that story, something that he would be burying deeper into his soul and that might hurt him even more in the future if he let it grow roots. He couldn’t go on with that doubt.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he thought, as a silent apology to everybody.  
  
He took the CD out of its case and reproduced it on his laptop.  
  
A video popped up on the screen. At first it was totally black; slowly, a photo of Nino faded in, together with a text, “we'll miss you”. There was music in the background. Some more pictures of him appeared, at parties, at home, in a restaurant, always with that enigmatic look in his eyes that pierced through Sho.  
  
He gulped and hesitated for a second, right when the slideshow ended, the music volume lowered gradually and a video clip started. He froze and watched it closely, his finger still on the extract button.  
  
“ _Hi! This is Sakurai Sho_ ,” a younger version of him waved to the camera. Then he turned it over, " _And this handsome guy here is Nino. Ninomiya Kazunari. Say hello!_ "  
  
There were at a restaurant with wooden tables and benches, surrounded by palm trees and other leafy plants, and the sound of waves in the distance. It was summer, clearly. It had to be filmed during some vacation.  
  
“ _Don’t film me while I'm eating,_ " Nino grunted. “ _I don’t like that_.”  
  
Sho laughed behind the camera and went to sit next to Nino, putting his hand around his shoulders. Now Nino's face was really close to the screen.  
  
“ _This guy's a bit grumpy today,_ ” he commented, “ _but now we’re going to the beach and he's gonna have a serious blast._ ”  
  
“ _Oh really?_ ” Nino said, not caring anymore about the camera and cramming his mouth with food. He looked away and snorted.  
  
Sho turned the camera over again and filmed both of them. He was checking out his reflection in the camera lens and fixing the sunglasses on his head when Nino jumped and gave him a kiss on the cheek, startling him. He laughed.  
  
A new clip started. This time he could also spot Aiba, Ohno, and even Jun. They were all in a ferry. This time it was Nino filming him. Sho was leaning on the rail.  
  
“ _Sho-chan_.”  
  
Sho ignored him. Nino screamed his name several times more, without getting any response but a deadpan expression.  
  
He then zoomed in Sho's face, gazing at the sea. The camera swayed lightly while he struggled not to laugh, until he couldn’t help giggling.  
  
“ _Hey! Don’t touch me there!_ ” he yelled; the camera shook violently and showed Ohno coming to them.  
  
“ _What are you doing again?_ ” he asked.  
  
“ _Are you jealous or what?_ " Nino said, and then his hand could be seen going after Ohno’s butt.  
  
Other vids were filmed at Aiba’s birthday, a day they went together to the cinema, and a night they spent at a rented house in the mountains.  
  
The last one was filmed by Jun at Sho's 28th birthday. That was some months before the accident.  
  
Aiba was laughing, sitting around a table next to Ohno. It seemed to be Sho’s former apartment. They were having an interesting conversation about the penguins Aiba was helping to raise at the zoo and how he wanted to give one to Sho as a present but he couldn't, so instead he sent him a picture with a birthday message. He hadn’t finished yet with his explanation when the birthday boy called the camera over to where he was.  
  
Nino and Sho were on the couch together, with no space between them. Jun didn’t talk much; he just said something like “the lovely couple” and then sat in front of them, still recording.  
  
“ _Gentlemen_ ,” the Sho on the screen started his speech, " _please listen to me._ ”  
  
“ _Oh, there he goes, he’s drunk again!_ ” Nino laughed at his side, patted his stomach, and then let him go on.  
  
“ _First,_ ” he made a long pause to drink some beer from the can he was holding, " _I want to say that I love you all._ "  
  
Jun chuckled a bit.  
  
“ _BUT_ ” he shouted, “ _—oops, sorry, too loud— there’s one of you I love the most._ ”  
  
Nino rolled his eyes, but still looked amused.  
  
“ _Nino!_ ” he grabbed his chin and looked into his eyes. The camera tilted a bit. “ _Nino_ …”  
  
Aiba and Ohno went all “ _Kuu~_ ” at the background.  
  
“ _I love you_.”  
  
Nino could only hold it for half a second before bursting into laughter, burying his face in the crook of his elbow and bending over as Sho grinned, completely satisfied with his public confession.  
  
“ _You’re so stupid!_ ”  
  
In front of the screen, Sho’s eyes were brimming with tears. He wiped them off as soon as he noticed, and no more came out. His hands were trembling. His full body was trembling. He was too shocked to give any other reaction.  
  
It was like looking at other person’s memories, like a very well made movie in which he played the role of one of the main characters. A character that had his same face, his same name and even the same friends, but that wasn’t really him. The Sho on the screen was a different man. He _felt_ like a different man.  
  
He spent the whole afternoon watching it over and over again. He became very familiar with the images shown, but couldn’t find their matches in his damaged memory. But what he did find was a powerful current of mixed feelings, flowing directly from the dark waters he had just dived into.  
  
At one point, he paused the video and tried to figure his emotions out. He closed his eyes, leaned back on the chair and took a deep breath. There were three waves generating the current. The first one was the same confusion he had felt ever since that day at the airport, perhaps more intense than ever before. The next one was something between nostalgia and sadness. Nostalgia because those moments, as common and unimportant they could look to anyone else, they were precious to him. He was happy to live them again, even though it was through short videos, but sad to think it would never be like that anymore.  
  
The last and strongest wave was _love_. The love that, through all those years, he had felt for Nino. It was like an extraordinarily heavy stone falling to the bottom of his heart and sweeping everything else away. Like a sudden punch in the ribs, tearing him apart. Nothing else came back with it; only the overwhelming weight of the love he had experienced while Nino was still by his side. At the same time an enormous void was filled, a new aching one was left.  
  
Because that was also gone, and everything was already over.  
  
He resumed the video and observed Nino’s face, listened to his voice raise when he complained. He hadn’t changed at all, unlike the rest. The one in those videos was the same man he had seen months ago in the street, the one he had wanted to protect, the one he had kissed. He had almost convinced himself that it had been a mistake, but now he wasn’t that sure about it. Things might be finished between them, but the feelings, at least on his part, were undoubtedly alive.  
  
“I’m home,” a voice and the sound of keys being left on the counter brought him back to reality.  
  
As he heard some steps coming from behind, he stood up, then slowly turned around to see Jun’s eyes darting from the messy pile of CDs on the floor to the screen, before finally fixing on him. Sho clenched his fists and looked away. Jun blinked and just stood there, like a statue, a white bag that probably contained their dinner hanging from his right hand. None of them spoke.  
  
It dawned on Sho all at once. Jun had always known everything, from the start. He had taken the decision not to let him know. And, what was worse, he had probably taken that decision for Aiba, for Ohno and maybe for Nino as well. Not even when Sho demanded to know he gave him the truth. What he gave him instead was a bunch of lies, all of which he had practically swallowed.  
  
Sho started to cry silently. He let the tears run down his cheeks, not paying attention to them, and walked up to Jun. In front of him, it was hard to hold the rage and breathe at the same time. In a weak, hoarse voice, he pronounced the only word he felt capable of saying before completely breaking down.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because I love you,” Jun said almost immediately, not able to hide a note of desperation.  
  
Sho smiled bitterly and left. The room was filled with the sound of laughter from the video still playing on the laptop.

 

***

  
  
In the next few days, they didn’t speak to each other. They also tried to avoid being in the same place, as much as it was possible living in the same house.  
  
Sho spent most of the time in his room, working, reading books or listening to music. He had been planning some activities to make the most of his short holidays, but after what happened he didn’t feel like going out anymore. He had a lot to process, things to find a place for in his half-devastated, messy shelf of past experiences, and it was best to do that between some walls.  
  
Meanwhile, Jun started sleeping voluntarily on the sofa, where he sat for hours every day after coming home from work, without trying to approach him in any way. Sho had no idea of what he expected to happen just like that, and he couldn’t care less. Whether he was hiding his suffering under a mask of perfect indifference or didn’t really feel sorry for what he had done, it didn’t matter. Sho wasn’t angry at him anymore; instead, what he began to feel for him was an intense disappointment.  
  
“We’re going on a trip tomorrow,” Jun suddenly announced one morning, two days before Sho had to go back to work officially.  
  
Sho lifted his head and stared at him over the pages of his recently delivered daily newspaper. Jun looked restless, as though he hadn’t slept all night, but there was also a flash of determination in his eyes Sho had never seen before. Even so, he simply cleared his throat, reached to grab a toast from his plate and went back to the article he was reading.  
  
“Fine, don’t say anything,” Jun added, “but be ready to go at 7 o’clock in the morning.”  
  
“What if I don’t want to go?” Sho finally replied, closing his newspaper and folding it on the table.  
  
“It isn’t an offer you can take or not,” Jun said, in an upset tone. “It is already arranged like that.”  
  
“Oh, wow, it’s wonderfully easy living around you,” Sho smiled wryly. “You’re quite talented at orchestrating other people’s lives, aren’t you?”  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
“Yes, of course,” Sho affirmed, sitting back on his chair. His pent-up frustration rushed to his head like a barely controlled electric discharge, and the words that didn’t come out last time burst from his mouth. “This was the perfect opportunity to show how exceptionally good you are at it. You knew this person who had an accident and lost his memory, so you thought, ‘hey, why don’t I make up a new story for the poor man?’ How funny, building someone else’s life however you like it to be.”  
  
“It’s not like that, and you know it,” Jun defended himself.  
  
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sho went on. “What am I supposed to think, then? What other parts of my life you want me to ignore? Tell me, what other fake stories did I believe?”  
  
“Sho, I never told you any lies before this,” Jun sighed, arms crossed over his chest.  
  
“And now you expect me to trust you,” Sho answered in a shaky voice. “Damn it, I was so stupid from the beginning. I don’t know why I leaned so much on you. It might even be my fault for being so naive.”  
  
“Calm down,” Jun asked him in a soft voice. “I assure you there is a good reason—”  
  
“I don’t care!” Sho snapped at him, almost yelling. “I had the right to know from the start! You took it away from me!”  
  
“You don’t know how wrong you are!” Jun raised his tone as well, arching his eyebrows. “I only wanted to help you!”  
  
“Covering all up with lies, that’s it! That’s how you helped me?”  
  
“If that’s how you want to see it, then yes!”  
  
At this point, they were both standing up, staring intently at each other. Sho was leaning over the table, his hand resting on the place where he had punched it seconds ago. Both of Jun’s hands were clasping the edge at the opposite side of the table, a measure taken to hold his rage.  
  
“You don’t even have the intention to apologize, do you?” Sho told him, practically in a whisper.  
  
“No,” Jun muttered briefly, before adding in an authoritative tone: “Not until you’re able to understand.”  
  
“Seriously, Jun...” Sho spoke tiredly. He spent some seconds looking for the right words to describe his thoughts. “I don’t know why you do this.”  
  
Jun let himself fall back to his chair as Sho stormed out of the kitchen. He covered his face with his hands and threw his head back until it touched the wall behind.  
  
Sho wouldn’t realize how hurtful his words had been until later.


	4. Chapter 4

The train left Tokyo at 8.33 the following morning. The journey to Kyoto would last a bit longer than two hours. Sho put on his headphones and played some music to relax as he observed the landscape through the window. The small suitcase he had brought with himself was in the luggage compartment. Apart from that, he only had his cell phone, his wallet, the key to his apartment and a bag Jun had given to him before he left home.  
  
“I cancelled the ticket I bought for me. I’m not interested in seeing that man anyway,” he had said the night before.  
  
Sho didn’t like the way he said “that man”. There was something very cold and disdainful in it, as if Nino was one of the worst people in the planet. That “good reason” Jun argued had to be very good if it justified talking about him like that.  
  
And yet, he had prepared something for Sho to give him. It was a medium-sized package, wrapped in bright yellow paper. Sho thought it was a little too flashy to give to an adult, but he knew nothing about Nino’s likes, anyway.  
  
Like many other times during that week, Sho revisited one by one the few memories of Nino he had. He went from the moments in the videos (although they weren’t true memories, they were the only thing he had), through that memory that came back on Christmas, to what happened the last time he actually saw him, around three months before. The shape of his small body fading back among the crowd was always the last image playing on his mind.  
  
It was raining today, too. It was June, after all, so it wasn’t really a coincidence, but it was funny. He observed the thin, diagonal lines the raindrops drew on the glass, over and over again. The faster the train moved, the shorter they became, and the sooner they vanished. The traces they left on the surface changed; they broke and scattered in all directions and it was almost impossible to follow them.  
  
Sho thought of Nino and him, and wondered if there was any line left connecting them.

 

***

  
  
He arrived at the address Jun had given him at around 11.30, after getting a taxi ride from the station. It was a modern hotel that seemed to have many conference rooms were company meetings were held. Nino was supposed to be staying there for two days, starting from the previous night.  
  
Sho got out of the car after paying to the driver. Fortunately, the rain had stopped for some hours and he didn’t have to take his umbrella out or hurry into the building. Once inside, he went to the reception desk and asked for the restaurant. It was on the second floor, like Jun had told him as well. He would be meeting Nino there at 12.00 for lunch.  
  
He asked for a table and sat there to wait while reading a book he had recently bought. He was almost finished with the first chapter when he noticed someone walking in his direction.  
  
“Hey there, Sho-chan,” he greeted him in a much friendlier tone than the one he used when they talked first over the phone and in their later meeting.  
  
“Hey,” Sho smiled. He felt a gap closing between them. “How are you?”  
  
Nino took out his suit jacket and put it on the back of his chair before sitting down. Then he craned his neck and looked around. Sho did the same. There were people coming in from different entrances. Several meetings had finished at the same time as Nino’s.  
  
“Wasn’t J coming with you?” he asked. “Sorry, I meant Jun.”  
  
“Is that how you called him?” Sho laughed, handing him one of the menus the waiter had brought before.  
  
“Yes, just to tease him,” Nino explained. “To break the ice, you know. I wanted to be good friends with him. We had a lot in common, I think.”  
  
Sho listened to him carefully. He was very pleased with this new attitude he was showing him. Of course, it was much more comfortable to be with him now than with the stiff, mysterious Nino from the other times. Besides, it was nice and refreshing to hear someone talking so casually of the past, for a change.  
  
“He didn’t come, but he gave me this for you,” Sho told him, taking the gift out.  
  
Nino thanked him and took it in his hands.  
  
“Let me guess...” Sho mused, scratching his chin. “Happy Birthday?”  
  
“Right!” Nino nodded, opening the bright wrapping paper. “Wow, how did he get the limited edition? Awesome!”  
  
It was a video game. Sho didn’t know it beforehand, but he wasn’t surprised either. The idea of Nino playing video games made perfect sense in his mind, just like the idea of the earth rotating around the sun or the rivers flowing into the sea. It was shockingly obvious the moment it hit him.  
  
“So did you play games together a lot? You and Jun, I mean.”  
  
“No,” Nino laughed, apparently amused by his question. “But I don’t blame him. He had a good reason not to like me very much.”  
  
Sho’s heart skipped a beat. Nino noticed the change in his expression.  
  
“Come on, haven’t you guessed it already?” he joked, as if it were a game.  
  
Once again, the realization came fast. Sho felt incredibly silly he hadn’t thought of that before. He had been too busy sorting his feelings out and pondering over different aspects of the matter.  
  
Back then, when the five of them (including Nino) used to hang out together, there was a single difference: the fact that Sho was going out with a different person.  
  
“He was jealous of you.”  
  
“Not exactly, but close to that,” Nino replied, making a gesture with his hand.  
  
At that moment, the waiter came and took their orders.  
  
“I don’t get it, then,” Sho muttered after giving it some thought. “If he wasn’t jealous, what happened?”  
  
“Well...” Nino seemed to hesitate, resting his elbows on the table. “We got on just fine, but things got a bit complicated.”  
  
“A fight?”  
  
Nino shook his head. He rubbed his face with his hands and sighed. Sho kept his eyes fixed on him, patiently waiting for a proper response.  
  
“You have to be kidding me,” he joked bitterly. “I never thought I’d have to talk about this a second time. The first it time it was hard enough.”  
  
“Was it that bad?”  
  
“It was what got you into that accident.”  
  
Sho fell immediately silent.  
  
“Well, I guess the circumstances also played a little part on it,” Nino thought out loud. “Will you make a promise to me, first of all?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“When I leave this place,” he made a pause to check his watch, “in, let’s say, fifty-five minutes, please don’t go after me. Do not follow me, for any reason. Okay?”  
  
“Okay...” Sho agreed, a bit alarmed.  
  
“I know you won’t this time, but I want to make sure,” Nino winked.  
  
Their food came and they started having lunch. Sho found himself carefully studying the way Nino ate, how he used his chopsticks, the way he held the rice bowl, with those cute little hands and their chubby fingers. He felt a certain fondness coming from the bottom of his heart, where that enormous stone had fallen days ago. But, this time, it didn’t hurt. He discovered he once loved those hands very much, but, after seeing them again, he might be able to let that ounce of love go.  
  
“I broke up with you that day,” Nino suddenly confessed. “And you couldn’t take it. There were many things at once —things weren’t as good as they used to be between us, my feelings had started to change, and I had been offered that position overseas. I explained everything to you, in every way I could think of, and I apologized a million times, but you wouldn’t listen.”  
  
He stopped eating and frowned.  
  
“The only thing left to do was leaving. I had already accepted to transfer, and I was taking a plane the following week. I trusted that, with me gone far away and no option but to give up, you would eventually move on. I knew you were very stubborn when it came to the things you wanted, but I also knew I could believe in that your wounds would heal.”  
  
Sho imagined himself in that situation, and he didn’t need to remember anything to know how he reacted to Nino’s news back then.  
  
“So I left. The argument happened at your apartment, and I still remember you chasing me downstairs, to the main hall of the building, and out to the street. I ran across the road, and so did you.”  
  
“A car hit me pretty badly, and almost ran over me,” Sho finished the story for him. “That’s all I knew up to now.”  
  
He left his chopsticks down and wiped his mouth with a serviette, slowly assimilating the information he had just received.  
  
“At first I felt terribly guilty,” Nino continued. “I wondered if what I was going to do was really that wrong. But then I understood it wasn’t.”  
  
“How?”  
  
“You aren’t going to like this part,” Nino affirmed, after pouring some more water into their glasses. “You can say I’m selfish and cowardly, and I won’t complain. In a sense, I was selfish and cowardly indeed.”  
  
Sho invited him to go on anyway with a gesture.  
  
“When the doctors said you didn’t remember anything about the past six years, I thought it was my chance. Well, a chance for both of us to go on. Or rather, a way to finish things the most nicely possible and get a second opportunity. A fresh start.”  
  
“You voluntarily disappeared from my life,” Sho summarized it at the same time his heart sank, “never to come back.”  
  
“Unless you suddenly remembered me,” Nino clarified, “which was very unlikely to happen, after the shock you had.”  
  
“Then I saw you at the airport,” Sho added, “and it happened.”  
  
Nino said nothing. From an outsider’s point of view, what he had done was just like he had said, selfish and cowardly. Taking advantage of his condition to escape as he had planned, without trying to make it up and say goodbye properly to him —that was a low blow. However, if he put himself in Nino’s place, Sho could find it a little bit more understandable.  
  
“We’re forgetting an important part, though,” Nino pointed out, a slight smile playing on his lips. “There was something else that made it possible for me to leave. I hope you forgive me after hearing this, because I’m the only one at fault here.”  
  
“What is it?”  
  
“There was someone who loved you so much I could never be a true match for them,” Nino stated, measuring his words. “Someone who had been there for you even before me, and who would never leave your side, no matter what.”  
  
“Jun,” Sho thought. He unconsciously moved his lips as to pronounce his name.  
  
“I didn’t hesitate to leave everything in his hands,” Nino went on with his explanation. “That man is incredible. He was watching over us so closely, especially for you, he noticed things weren’t working anymore before I knew it myself. And, of course, when he found out what I was going to do, weeks before your accident, he got furious at me. You both have such a temperament,” he laughed, and stopped to drink some water.  
  
When the waiter passed by their table, he asked for the bill.  
  
“Later, he was still sceptical about it. But he was going to take care of you anyway, so we reached a tacit agreement. I left, he stayed,” he concluded.  
  
Sho didn’t know what to say. If things were like that, he had been judging Jun so wrongly. He hadn’t used the right means, but his end was always to spare him the pain. Everything he had told him was true. He was trying to help him, because he loved him.  
  
“I guess he didn’t want you to get hurt again,” Nino spoke again after they brought the bill.  
  
He took his wallet out and made a gesture for Sho not to take out his.  
  
“Let me treat you as a small compensation,” he offered. “I don’t know if you remember of not, but in the almost four years we were a couple, I only treated you four times. Once a year. So this is actually an event.”  
  
Sho couldn’t help laughing.  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yes. I love money that much,” Nino acknowledged, half-jokingly.  
  
They got up from the table and walked together to the elevator, in silence. Sho had a strange sensation; even though he had just had a quite heavy lunch, he felt much lighter than before. After Nino pressed the button for the first floor, he had the feeling that they were leaving everything behind, like helium-filled balloons slipping out of their hands and flying up to the sky. They would fly so high and so far that they would eventually lose sight of them.  
  
Before they reached the main hall, Nino turned around and hugged him. A bit hesitantly at first, Sho also put his arms around his body. It was then when he realized that the stone in his heart had become barely a bunch of pebbles, and the immense void was now narrow enough to jump over it.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Nino whispered.  
  
Sho shook his head lightly. With this, he would have lost him twice. But this time he was ready to let go. And, when he did so, the immense love he had once felt for him set sail and started to drift away, slowly but steadily, in the waters of his memory, now much calmer and clearer.  
  
“Thank you.”

 

***

  
  
It was already dark outside when Sho woke up in his room. After saying goodbye to Nino, he had gone upstairs and laid for a while on the king sized bed, hoping that a short nap would help him take in better the story he had been told.  
  
Nino, the person he had loved for many years, suddenly left his side. He couldn’t accept it, and went after him. He had an accident. When he opened his eyes at the hospital, another person was by his bed. A person who always took care of him without asking for anything in return. A person he didn’t love as much at first, but with whom he had fell in love with somewhere along his way to recovery. A person he owed an apology to.  
  
He imagined what he could be doing at the moment. He pictured Jun in their living room, an open magazine in his hands; he had been trying to read something in an attempt to stop worrying over Sho and Nino and what they were talking about, the thing he had been fighting to avoid all that time, but it was impossible. His eyes just kept going through the same lines, while his mind was unable to disconnect. Although he had chosen not to go in the last moment, he was dying to be there and check the situation himself.  
  
Sho grabbed his cell phone from the bedside table and turned the screen on. There were no unanswered calls. Instead, a message popped up. It was from Aiba.  
  
 _Please forgive Jun, I’m begging you!  
  
He loves you very much!_  
  
Sho didn’t reply. Being scolded by Aiba only confirmed that he had been too hard on Jun.  
  
“I know,” he thought.  
  
He got up and decided to go for a walk and get something to eat for dinner. He saw through the window it was raining again, so he put on a hooded jacket before leaving.  
  
As he stepped out of the room, he found Jun standing in the corridor. He gave Sho a doubtful look and lowered his head. It was the first time he showed him such a scared and insecure face. He had never looked so defeated, not even that time at the hospital.  
  
“How long have you been here?” Sho asked him, not waiting for a response before reaching to grab his suitcase. “Come in.”  
  
Jun followed him inside and closed the door. Sho placed his suitcase next to his and then sat down on the mattress. He patted the covers, inviting Jun to do the same.  
  
“Aiba and Ohno forced me to come,” he justified himself, suggesting that he wasn’t welcome. “Ohno bought the train tickets, and Aiba went home and prepared my suitcase for me. I don’t want to look inside.”  
  
Sho gave him a little smile and pulled at his arm so he would sit.  
  
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, honestly. “Not here in Kyoto, or in the hotel. Just here, together with me.”  
  
Jun looked as if he hadn’t expected to hear that.  
  
“I’m so sorry, Jun. For talking about things I didn’t know about and jumping to conclusions.”  
  
“You don’t need to be,” Jun shook his head. “I deceived you.”  
  
“That’s right, you did,” Sho agreed, “and I’m still waiting to hear an apology for that. But I was too blind to see anything else. I ended up pushing your feelings aside. I’m very sorry.”  
  
“Don’t say that,” Jun insisted. “I knew how things were. I’m the one to blame, for trying to steal another person’s place. For that and for everything that I’ve done to you, I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry, Sho.”  
  
“Now we’re even,” Sho laughed. “But you didn’t do anything like that.”  
  
“No, Sho, you don’t know,” Jun said, looking at his hands. “You loved him so, _so_ much I can’t... You looked so happy next to him, so bright and full of energy. I convinced myself that, as long as you were with him, you would be okay. I was ready to give up and move on. And then that jerk—”  
  
“Went and dumped me,” Sho completed his sentence.  
  
“It broke my heart just to think of how you would be after that,” Jun let out a big sigh. “I wanted to fix it for you, somehow.”  
  
“There was nothing you could do.”  
  
“Yes, there was. I could have told you earlier and warned you so you wouldn’t have to go through it for a second time,” Jun continued. “But I was too scared.”  
  
“Scared of what?” Sho asked, placing a hand on his shoulder.  
  
Jun opened his mouth to talk, but closed it again without making any sound. He looked away from Sho and tilted his head backwards, trying to blink back the tears forming in his eyes. Sho put his arms around him and held him tightly. Jun welcomed his embrace. They stayed like that for a while. When Jun finally broke down, he buried his head in the crook of Sho’s neck and sobbed silently, shuddering.  
  
“This is so embarrassing,” he said in a muffled voice.  
  
Sho reached for the tissue box on the bedside table and gave it to him. Jun thanked him and wiped his tears hurriedly, before Sho could see them.  
  
“Even working for a publishing house, I’m not as good with this type of words as you are,” Sho talked when he felt he was calming down, not turning to look at him yet. “But you need to know I love you, Jun.”  
  
Jun lifted his head and gulped.  
  
“And it wouldn’t make any sense to compare it to any other love, or guessing if it’s greater or not,” Sho continued. “I just do. That’s all that matters.”  
  
At the same time he confessed his feelings, he definitely saw everything clear. Jun moved his hand and placed it on top of Sho’s, giving it a light squeeze.  
  
“Only you can help me now,” Sho said, observing him from the corner of his eye. “Make me forget, once again.”  
  
Jun moved closer, gave him a tender smile and leaned in for a kiss.

 

***

  
  
The smooth surface of the blackboard was cold and dusty. Sho ran the tip of his index finger through it, leaving a clean trace behind. He thought of the many lessons he had learned from the things written on that place. It was the room he had most of his classes at during his years as a university undergraduate.  
  
“You started at 8 am on Mondays,” Jun spoke from behind him, sitting on the teacher’s chair, “and went home past 5 pm most of the days, except for Fridays. That was the day when you used to be less grumpy,” he laughed. Sho gave him a scolding look. “Because Nino would come and pick you up in the afternoon.”  
  
“I see,” Sho nodded.  
  
He stepped down from the platform in front of the blackboard, went to lean on the side of the table and listened.  
  
“I think he was working at some pizza place back then. He would sometimes come straight after his shift was over, so he still had his uniform on. People stared at him, probably wondering what a guy like that was doing in front of the campus. But he never gave a damn about it. He only came for you.”  
  
“Such an interesting guy,” Sho commented, picturing him in his mind.  
  
“Yes, he certainly was,” Jun said. “You told me you were sure he sometimes did it on purpose. To make a difference, you meant.”  
  
“Yes, I believe I would think like that,” Sho agreed. “It suits my idea of Nino.”  
  
He turned around and rested his elbows on the table, rubbing off the dust from his fingers.  
  
“But tell me more about you and me. Did we share any habits?”  
  
Jun smiled shyly.  
  
“My classes were at a different building, and our schedules didn’t match, so we didn’t really see each other around here much,” he explained. “But I sometimes came by to say hello.”  
  
“You went across the campus only to say hello to me?”  
  
“Yes... I only wanted to get a glimpse of you,” Jun admitted, faintly blushing. “Oh, but we also had lunch together once every while. You treated me.”  
  
“Did I?” Sho said, surprised. “What a nice senpai!”  
  
“Yeah, well, but you rarely had any free time to do so,” Jun replied. “Anyway, there was this restaurant around Ebisu. We took the subway and went there together.”  
  
“Ah, the one with the delicious soba!” Sho exclaimed. “It was incredibly tasty.”  
  
“Yes, that one!”  
  
“My stomach just rumbled thinking of it,” Sho confessed. “We should go. Do you think it’s still there?”  
  
“Let’s go check,” Jun stood up, checking his watch. “I think we can make it.”  
  
He headed towards the exit and Sho followed him, placing an arm around his shoulder. They walked once again through the corridor where they met for the first time and Sho impersonated Jun back then, his books slipping from his hands and hitting the floor with a heavy thud. Jun laughed loudly and demanded to be treated to lunch as usual. Sho accepted, on the condition that Jun would tell him more about those times they spent together.  
  
From that day on, Sho was never afraid of looking back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! ♥ To all those who read this from the beginning, thank you very much! I hope you enjoyed it ^^


End file.
